Lies That Blind

by Tony Hutchinson

  Sam was sitting in the front of the Scenes of Crime van next to Julie Trescothick, engine running, heater on full blast.

  Julie was a highly regarded Senior Crime Scene Investigator.

  They had already agreed on the forensic strategy and discussed the logistics of multiple crime scenes within one overarching scene.

  Sam was clear in what she wanted, which other experts she needed.

  There were three dead in the cul-de-sac…Paul Adams and two men yet to be formally identified, although in all probability Marcus Worthington-Hotspur and Joey ‘Fatty’ Sanderson; he was known to the AFOs who found him in one of the gardens.

  Three bodies, three scenes, three tents.

  There was a dead man in the house, again identity unconfirmed but believed to be Zac Williams in his white rabbit suit. There was also a dead female, possibly Lucy Spragg.

  Two more scenes.

  The house itself was a scene.

  Sam watched the police activity.

  She had already liaised briefly with Gerry Trout. Four AFOs had ensured the house was safe, the priority above and beyond the preservation of forensic evidence.

  Gerry would inform the AFOs that they might need to hand over their boots to the forensic team. Footwear may have blood on it, tread patterns may be visible in pools of blood in the house. The boots would have to be matched to those tread patterns and identified as belonging to the AFOs.

  Everybody’s presence in that house – police, suspect, or anyone else – had to be accounted for. Fail to identify everybody and the conspiracy theorists would be all over it… and Sam knew plenty of briefs who loved a conspiracy.

  ‘Maybe the real shooter was the person whose fingerprints weren’t identified; whose footprints weren’t identified.’

  Every case, Sam knew, had to be watertight.

  One of the AFOs had made sure the only weapon found in the house had been made safe. Gerry had informed Sam of the type of weapon used by the shooter, its characteristics and capabilities, but guns meant nothing to her. For all Gerry’s obvious technical knowledge she only needed to know it was a rifle.

  Sam had already spoken with a ballistics expert, who was travelling from the Midlands to conduct extensive tests and answer the questions she had posed.

  Were the bullets that killed four people and wounded young ‘Spiderman’ fired from the same weapon?

  Were the bullets that killed ‘white rabbit’ from the AFO’s gun?

  Sam exhaled hard, her brain a whirlwind.

  Five bodies, five post mortems and she would attend every one.

  The AFO who took the shot was himself another scene. His weapon would be seized, he would need to be interviewed at some stage.

  Whilst the IPCC – the Independent Police Complaints Commission – had been officially notified of the incident, Sam, as SIO, retained primacy as far as investigating the homicide of Zac Williams was concerned.

  Sam walked to the house with Julie, both identically dressed in white paper suits with hoods up and white paper overshoes.

  A SOCO was filming an overview of the street, the bodies, the Porsche.

  Tents were being erected to give the dead some dignity away from prying eyes and telephoto lenses as well as preserving forensic evidence.

  The cul-de-sac looked like a CSIs convention and Sam was responsible for their every move, every examination, every subsequent test.

  She knew the weight of expectations placed on her. The expectation from her team, bosses, the Coroner, courts, solicitors and barristers; that every piece of evidence would be recovered in a methodical manner, with no cross contamination, secured for whatever forensic testing she deemed necessary to progress the investigation and to allow any future interested parties to examine the exhibits and perhaps conduct their own tests.

  The pressing expectation now was that everything at the scene would be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Keeping families and young children away from their homes, throwing them together in the confined space of the church hall, was like putting a bullet in a microwave – explosive.

  This was not the London Blitz, 1940s strangers spending the night in an underground Tube station. This was modern Britain, a place where many people existed in their own social media bubble, interacting with strangers as alien to them as a bomb dropping on their house.

  Sam looked at her watch. 10.30pm.

  Personnel at the church hall from a variety of agencies wanted the people back in the houses as soon as possible. Sam knew it had already kicked-off; a guy had demanded he be allowed to return home to get his cigarettes and cans of lager.

  It was a balancing act, but nobody else carried the responsibility of the crime scene management. Months down the line if it became apparent things had been missed, nobody would come to her rescue and say ‘we were all putting pressure on her to get on with it.’

  Sam was anxious to get started, wanted to get into the house, get a feel for where it all started, understand the sequence of events, but she would not be rushed.

  The front door was hanging off its hinges, the wood frame no match for the Enforcer, the hand-held battering ram that had been swung at it by one of the AFOs. They nicknamed it ‘The Big Red Key’ because it opened all doors.

  The front garden was littered with broken glass, a metal kitchen stool among the debris.

  The walk-through by the SOCO filming the house had been completed. The film showed the front of the house and then the interior of every room, close ups of each body, every blood splatter, everything that looked out of place.

  Sam stopped at the door, allowed Julie to enter. The steel stepping plates were already in place, there to enable those permitted entry to walk around without standing on the carpets and stepping in blood, potentially contaminating forensic evidence.

  Sam had already asked Julie to call out a forensic scientist specialising in blood pattern analysis. The expert would arrive later that morning.

  They both understood the need for such an expert; how the scientist could interpret the blood splatters, inform them and subsequently a court, albeit potentially a coroner’s court in this instance, of what the patterns meant.

  But it was Sam who authorised their attendance. She held the purse strings and with a ballistic expert, pathologist, and an ever-expanding number of police officers and support staff on overtime, the major incident budget was already taking a hammering.

  She walked into the house, hands in her pockets, careful not to touch anything.

  She stepped onto the first metal plate in the hallway. The size of a small patio paving stone, the thin rim keeping the plate off the floor.

  There was no stair carpet and the white skirting boards were yellow and thick with dust.

  Sam loved dust at crime scenes, the SIO’s equivalent of a spider’s web, where forensic evidence, not flies, were the prey.

  In the small square living-room the photographer was taking the last few shots of White Rabbit before unmasking him. The body was laid on its back, two gunshot wounds in the chest.

  The room was cold, damp air swooping through the broken window. The window would be boarded up, but only after the net curtains had been taken down, bagged and tagged, and the glass and windowsill had been examined. Same with the one upstairs.

  ‘Presumably the gun’s so far from him because an AFO has moved it?’ Sam asked, noticing the rifle was at least a metre away.

  Julie nodded. ‘One of the firearms team kicked it away when they rushed in.’

  ‘Can’t blame them for that. I’d have done exactly the same. And it’s been made safe?’

  Julie confirmed any ammunition had been removed and a check carried out to make sure there wasn’t a bullet in the chamber.

  ‘Let’s get some photographs of it and then get an AFO to remove it.’

  White paper arrows were stuck on the walls pointing out each trace of blood, the arrows occasionally illuminated under the camera flash as another blood splatter was photographed.
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br />   The room was a mine of forensic opportunities but like a prospector sieving for gold, Sam knew patience was paramount. Staff would be in this house for days.

  She saw the broken mobile phone on the floor, the dent in the wall just below the ceiling suggesting it been thrown with some force.

  ‘Ed was right when he said he’d smashed the phone.’

  Sam walked on the plates into the kitchen.

  Her eyes locked onto the lifeless body of a blonde, head slumped forward, hands behind her back, tied to a chair, which was pushed tight against the wall.

  Sam knew before she bent down that the girl had been shot somewhere in the face due to the massive hole in the back of her head, and the blood and brain matter on the wall behind her. Squatting down, getting her head under the deceased’s, she saw that the girl had been shot in the right eye.

  ‘AFOs reckon she’s been shot twice in the face,’ Julie said.

  Sam recalled a lecture when it had been suggested one of the reasons for a previous partner attacking the face was to dehumanise the victim.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll be correct but Jim will tell us,’ Sam said.

  Jim Melia, the Home Office Forensic Pathologist was, at Sam’s request, on his way to the scene.

  Sam was confident this was ‘Wonder Woman’ in the photograph on Jean Spragg’s mobile phone – same build, same length hair, same female gender tattoo on her left wrist.

  Sam stood up, leaned forward, put her hands on her knees and retched.

  Julie looked at her, more out of shock than sympathy. Sam Parker never got queasy at crime scenes.

  Sam pointed at the stomach-churning smell of years of accumulated black grease on the cooker hob.

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ she said, wiping her mouth as she straightened.

  ‘Positively gleaming in comparison to the oven,’ Julie said, her own bright white smile at odds with the cooker.

  ‘No hidden weapons, but you wouldn’t want to warm a pie in there.’

  ‘Pack it in or I’ll baulk again.’

  Sam’s smile vanished as she turned around and saw the copies of the newspapers on the other wall. She read the headlines.

  Fuck.

  Chapter 15

  Ed stood in the hall and locked the door.

  When had he last turned a key without worrying about a verbal ambush? His wife’s screeching was like an Exocet missile – you knew it was coming but there was nothing you could do to stop it.

  He stood there, eyes closed, savouring the silence. No ambush tonight.

  He walked into the kitchen, flicked on the light. It was as he remembered, although walking into the brightness this time was different. That night Sam had been frightened, convinced the serial rapist they were hunting knew where she lived.

  He flicked on the kettle and searched the gleaming units for a tea bag.

  Two cupboards later he eventually found them; Twinings Assam.

  He smiled. No common brew for Sam Parker.

  He walked across the kitchen to the wine cooler, grinned at the neat bottles, one compartment for red, the other for white, temperature dials showing the white wine compartment was cooler.

  He shook his head. He’d never felt the need for a wine cooler, but then again, the £5 bottles he bought probably didn’t need it.

  He could do with a drink but was worried he would inadvertently open something really expensive. He made do with tea, found the skimmed milk (what is the point Sam?) in the fridge and sat at the island.

  His conversations with Zac Williams began to play back in his head.

  What had he meant by ‘Help’s not coming’?

  Help for Williams?

  Help for Lucy?

  The AFOs told him there was a dead female in the house. Instinctively he knew it was her.

  What help did Williams need?

  His help? Not that he had been much help.

  Help from anybody else? Who?

  Williams never asked for anybody with the exception of his son.

  Maybe Ed should have allowed Elwood to come to the house. Things couldn’t have ended up any worse. Not for Zac Williams anyway.

  He poured the water over the teabag and sat back down, the cogs in his head turning.

  Sam had a big job on her hands but would he be on the investigation? He could be deemed too close to it; too emotionally involved.

  And who was Paul seeing? Paul told him he had a ‘new friend’ but didn’t mention her name, that he was keeping that under wraps.

  Ed had tried to talk Paul out of the affair, telling him he hadn’t been married long, but Paul wouldn’t listen.

  Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Ed had never heard of Zac Williams until he spoke on the phone. How did he get a rifle? He’d have expected to know something about the identity of a local criminal who could access firearms.

  He sipped the tea, burnt his tongue on the rim of the bone china rose-patterned mug.

  He was tired and drained but something was nagging.

  ‘Help’s not coming.’

  What the hell did that mean?

  ‘Where is he?’ Jimmy ‘Staples’ Marshall was irritated and edgy, glancing at his black-faced G-Shock watch. 10.45pm.

  ‘You know where he is, so just sit tight.’

  They were parked in a row of cars outside the cinema on the out of town retail park.

  Nothing attracts the attention of the local busybody more than two heavies sat in a car on a housing estate. A car amongst dozens of others on a retail park on a Saturday night doesn’t draw a second glance.

  ‘I thought he’d be done now,’ Marshall said, glancing at his watch again before looking up at the listings board for the cinema.

  ‘I quite fancy that new Tom Hanks film.’

  ‘Which one?’ Davy Swan asked him, not particularly interested in Marshall’s movie preferences.

  ‘Bridge of Spies. Looks class. I like spy stuff.’

  ‘Not heard of it.’

  Marshall looked at his watch again.

  Swan stared out of the windscreen, watched the uniformed security guy waddle along the path toward a burger outlet without the slightest interest in the car park, trouser belt tight under his hanging belly.

  ‘You in a rush?’ he said without taking his eyes off the security man. ‘Got somewhere else to be?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well stop looking at your watch every twenty seconds.’

  Swan watched the guard push open the burger place’s glass door and shook his head.

  ‘Look at that fat bastard. Unless they’re selling Ryvita and salads he should be banned from going in. Fat twat.’

  ‘I hate sitting around,’ Marshall said. ‘Always gives me the jitters.’

  Swan raised his voice in a snarl and turned to face Marshall.

  ‘Go for a walk then. Count the sandwiches. Just shut the fuck up. You’re doing my head in.’

  Marshall’s face reddened. He shuffled in the seat, looked over his shoulder. He was in enough trouble with The Man without cocking up the sandwich order.

  In his defence, he might have been instrumental in Taffy Green’s escape, but he hadn’t threatened the old newsagent and hadn’t let himself be seen by a potential witness.

  He leaned over to the back seat, picked up the Marks and Spencer carrier bag, and tipped the contents onto the footwell…salmon and cucumber, prawn mayo, and chicken salad pre-packed sandwiches; a Gala pie, sausage rolls, crisps, diet Coke and a selection of bite-sized cakes. A feast.

  Marshall put everything back into the carrier and returned it to the back seat.

  ‘Do you think he’ll like the food?’

  ‘We’ll never hear the last of it if he doesn’t.’

  ‘You should have come in with me.’

  Then I couldn’t blame you.

  Ahead, the security guard had pushed open the door with his left hand, mouth already busy on the burger.

  ‘He’ll eat his fucking fi
ngers if he’s not careful,’ Swan said, shaking his head.

  ‘Heart attack waiting to happen. He’ll be one of those who need winching out of bed.’

  Marshall jumped when the mobile on the centre console pinged.

  Swan snatched the phone, read the text message.

  Might be a bit longer.

  ‘What does it say?’

  Swan showed him the screen.

  ‘Great,’ Marshall said, reclining the seat and closing his eyes, thoughts back on sandwiches and cock-ups. ‘Fuckin’ great.’

  Sam read the news stories on the walls.

  The list of locations took in Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary, Columbine High, Red Lake High School, the Omaha shopping mall.

  And she read about the killers.

  The oldest at 23 was Seung-Hui responsible for gunning down 32 people at Virginia Tech. The youngest was 16-year-old Jeff Weisse at Red Lake.

  Sam stepped back.

  The numbers of victims varied but with the exception of Columbine, all the killers had acted alone. All had committed suicide.

  She wondered why there was no mention of Dunblane, the deadliest mass shooting in British history.

  The print went out of focus, letters blurred, a fog-like mass of grey.

  She rubbed her eyes and bit her lip, the memory of the free period when news of Dunblane broke transporting her back to different days, standing off-site with her friends, smoking, weeks away from her 17th birthday and driving lessons. She remembered the lady in the shop repeating the news from the radio, the eerie silence of the walk back to school, collective shock focusing on innocent school children and their teacher.

  Nearly twenty years ago. Innocents robbed of their lives by some sick fuck.

  She blinked rapidly, refocused eyes and brain, and looked back at the wall.

  Stay sharp, Sam

  She was dealing with a mass shooting – one location, multiple victims, single event.

  Michael Ryan, the Hungerford killer, had been a spree killer – victims in multiple locations–but the murders were still considered a single event because there was no cooling off period.

  By contrast serial killers struck at separate times, killing again after a cooling-off period that could last days, months or even years.